


Nothing Dangerous

by Twelve (Dodici)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ed Swears, First Meetings, Guns, M/M, Supermassive Plot Holes, a couple terrorists from that one time on the train you know which one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 06:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17197871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodici/pseuds/Twelve
Summary: All in all – that is, the murder attempt and the concussion – Roy is quite sure the date went pretty well.





	Nothing Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> Holy Mother of Dragons, this is the worst idea I ever had and I should be banned from Ao3 and also the universe.  
> Long story short, I had a Very Boring (Unpaid) Desk Job so I spent some downtime translating this thing instead of dying of boredom. I’d like to say I managed to teach myself some English in the process but… Nope. My English is still really, really bad.
> 
> Anyway, there’s Roy/Ed of some sort, there’s a lot of swear words in addition of my own bad grammar, there’s guns and bad guys, there’s a blind date and also awkward conversations.  
> If you’re still reading at this point, you have my honest and humble respect.

Truth is, being a soldier was awful.  
Being in the army and wearing the uniform – that awful green didn’t suit him at all – sucked. Receiving order sucked and there’s no need to further examine the matter: it sucked and Roy made the best decision of his whole pathetic life when he decided to leave all of that behind his back, save for a handful of trusted comrades.  
The only thing that he misses about the army is the right to give orders. Not to people in general, just to Havoc. Jean freaking Havoc, who’s right now comfortably seated on Roy’s desk and it appears to be no way to get him leave if not by using some seriously aggravating method – which would involve violations of the habeas corpus.  
The real question is: where’s Riza when he needs her?  
“Chief, it’s perfect, you know? I see you can’t see it ‘cause you’re doodling a tank… Eyes on me,” he says, fingers raised. Roy’s chin raises too by a few degrees and, yes, there’s now a tank doodled on Falman’s payroll… He needs a night off. “You need a night off, chief, and… You’ll love it. I don’t have a photo with me, but my sister says that if he looks at least a bit like his brother we’re totally covered. And also…”  
“Also you’re desperately trying to match him with someone because you’re afraid that he’s going to snatch your new girlfriend just like last time”.  
Roy and Havoc both turn towards Breda, but he’s keeping his eyes fixed on the computer screen.  
“You’re welcome,” he says. He raises his cup, which is full of coffee and why is Roy’s empty? He glances at the offending object, because if he’s going to glance at Havoc again the idiot’s probably going to catch fire and it would be a waste of useful thermal energy, which could be used to heath his nonexistent coffee instead – and, also, charred bodies smell terrible.  
Havoc has stopped sputtering denials, by then; he crosses his legs and puts an unlit cigarette behind his ear.  
“Okay, well, I’m just a man! And that’s not the point,” he starts again. “The point is, everyone wants to see you settled, chief. I mean, after all you’re almost forty”.  
“He’s thirty-five. To round it up we must at least wait till he turns thirty-six, I guess” Falman says, from another desk. Roy is not sure whether he should thank him or bang his head against the table. He decides to press the bridge of his nose between his fingers.  
“How come this person is so special that meeting him automatically justifies an absence from work, Jean?”  
Riza: wonderful, brilliant Riza, holding a pot of coffee. Sometimes Roy wonders how he managed to survive kindergarten before he got to know her.  
Breda grins.  
“Yes, Jean, tell us”.  
The cigarette falls off his ear and he doesn’t dare to pick it up. He tries to compose himself, even if Roy doubts that there’s an actual way to appear composed while seated on the desk of one’s employer.  
Jean cringes.  
“Well, first of all, he’s a doctor,” he says. Falman comments on the excellent combination of doctors and hypertension, which almost-forty-ish people very likely suffer from; Roy chooses to ignore him. “That’s a great thing ‘cause chief likes to talk as if he had swallowed a dictionary. He needs someone with a high level of education who can figure out what the hell he’s saying. Oh, and apparently he’s blond. Very blond, everyone like blondes. Or blonds, or whatever…” says Havoc and he winks towards Roy: his only reaction is imperceptibly moving the cup so that Riza gets the hint and refills it. She doesn’t disappoint.  
“So, we now know that this guy is blond and a doctor. Please, keep some information to yourself, Havoc, you know we’ve got little ram,” Breda says. He’s moving his index on the mouse in such a mechanical way that Roy’s almost certain that he’s playing Minefield instead of watching the cameras.  
Havoc makes a dramatic gesture with both his hands.  
“Come on, guys, which other information do you need? It’s just a date, it’s not as if anything dangerous could happen. If you need more info, I can ask my sister. But, seriously, he’s a doctor-”  
“And he’s blond,” says Breda.  
“Oh, you know him too?” Falman asks.  
Roy takes a long, long sip of his coffee.  
“A blond doctor,” he repeats, before Riza starts tensing her eyebrows in an increasingly minacious way. He lays the cup, turns the pen between thumb and forefinger and then turns his head towards her. “After all, I happened to have sex with people knowing even less than their job or hair color”.  
Fury enters the room in that exact moment. He settles his glasses and for a fraction of a second it’s like he’s trying to say something. Then he sighs, shakes his head and marches back to his seat.  
“I really, really don’t want to know, am I right?” he asks.  
Breda laughs so loudly that he almost falls off the chair.

*

Roy would like to say, even if it’s just for the sake of his pride, that he actually managed to block Havoc’s bad influence out of his life. Truth is, it’s now Friday and the blond doctor is waiting for him right under the office. The logistic of this choice, Roy suspects, has much more to do with the fact that his coworkers could attach their stupid faces to the window and catch a glimpse of blondness than anything about the convenience of those physically concerned.  
“Don’t forget to turn off the beeper,” Riza says, while Roy’s putting on his coat and deciding whether he needs to pee before leaving. Maybe it’s a bad idea: it’s always better to have an excuse to excuse oneself to the bathroom during this kind of meeting and it might as well be the truth, since it has happened that some of his date has decided to follow into the toilet for whatever reason – the hardships of dating men, really.  
He raises a hand to bid farewell to the gang of idiots in the office and resolutely pretends he hadn’t seen Havoc’s uplifted thumbs.  
It’s a stupid idea. He doesn’t need to play this kind of game to find a date: Roy could be a failure in the majority of life’s compartments but dating is not one of them. It has always come naturally to him and no one has ever complained.  
He snorts a bit and concentrates on the upside: he has earned himself a free evening, maybe a good steak if the restaurant on Main Street decides to have his back, probably good wine too. Perhaps a reasonable conversation with an attractive blond doctor, if it isn’t too much to ask.  
He furrows his forehead: there are some drops, it’s going to rain. His car is parked not far under the street light, a bit too close to a kid wearing a wool cap and a sullen expression. Funny: there’s no bus stop there.  
Roy walks for a few more meters, he leans towards the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. What was Riza saying? He should pay more attention, usually Riza says important things.  
“Hey”.  
Roy doesn’t turn. He’s trying to find out if that figure in the distance could be blond – very blond, maybe. But it’s not: she’s a brunette and also female.  
Roy smiles politely and she starts to walk at a faster pace.  
It really is a stupid idea: he should be inside of a pub, hitting on people willing to be hit on, instead of being there, making himself mistaken for a stalker by innocent people on the street.  
Screw that too: he could be in a pub _drinking_.  
“Hey, I’m talking to you”.  
Roy’s fingers are already wrapped around his car keys, but between himself and the car – aka, between himself and his future drink – there’s the sulky boy. Roy has to lower his chin a little just to actually look at him properly because he’s… short. There’s no other way to say it. For some reason, the gesture seems to cause a loud creak from the boy’s jaw.  
“Can I be of assistance?” Roy asks, but then he already knows. Because he’s a clever man and because under the ridiculously red wool cap – as red as the blood that will flow from Havoc’s nostrils when he’ll have the chance to break his face on a desk – the boy is blond. Very blond: Roy sincerely doubts that he has ever seen something this blond in his whole life. He will let Havoc know he was right on that while he cleans the floor from his miserable remains.  
“You’re Roy Mustang,” says the blond, and it isn’t a question and most of all it isn’t polite.  
Edward Elric – which is, as he managed to find out only yesterday, the name of the very blond doctor – succeeds somehow in looking at him from top to bottom even from his vertically challenged point of observation.  
Roy lifts his palms up.  
“Guilty as charged,” he says, before extending one hand, because his mother has taught him splendidly. “Edward Elric, I hope. Forgive me, but I had to guess… Havoc didn’t feel the need to share much information. I’m sure he finds this whole situation amusing. Have you been waiting for long?”  
The hand he had extended is still there, but apparently it’s just because Edward Elric is busy trying to process his words. The hopes of an engaging conversation with this blond and short doctor seem to fade dramatically – until he blinks and grabs the hand. The squeeze is a little lopsided, as if his fingers were numb; they’re cold even under the gloves.  
Then Edward Elric clears his throat and says: “yes. No. I’m early ‘cause the clock in the lab… Not important. Name’s Ed, anyway”.  
He’s looking at him like he’s waiting for an insult, his shoulders are tense and his expression wary. Havoc’s an idiot: blond doctor, doctor blond, but he didn’t say a thing about those incredible eyes. Yellow, at first – more like golden, the exact shade of a good bourbon. Roy will kill Havoc and then ask Riza to help him hide the evidence: that’s what best friends are for.  
“I’m sure I’ll be delighted to know more about that clock when we’ll get somewhere warm. Did you come on foot?”  
“I took the subway,” he says, hands back in his pockets and an entire step away from Roy’s elbow.  
“Very environmentally friendly of you,” he says. “Then, if you agree, we should take my car and-“  
“Look,” Ed says. “We don’t have to do this thing”.  
Roy turns around, his hand is already onto the door handle while Ed is… That expression he wears is not exactly a pout: it’s more like hesitation mixed with a complex kind of hostility, one that Roy is not even sure is directed towards him; it seems rather like something emanating from Edward’s body, an hamsterball of personal space a little wider than what people usually tend to consider personal, and a little more guarded.  
Not exactly what Roy would call a good start for a date that is already largely embarrassing in its premises.  
“When Havoc will be able to force me doing something without my consent, it will be the day he gets married”. He opens the car door in what he hopes is a fairly explicit invitation. “And that will not happen in this lifetime if he insists on declare his eternal love during the second date”.  
Edward’s throat suppresses a laugh inside the collar of his own sweatshirt. It’s good – the laugh, not the sweatshirt: that’s red and it’s hurting Roy’s eyes in a very special way.  
Edward Elric walks around the car and sits on the passenger side without an ounce of grace, yet there’s something charming about the way he takes up the space, as if he wants to break the seat and the car and everything and he’s restraining himself just in courtesy toward the universe and some social norms.  
The leather seat creaks as he fumbles to pull off his cap with an exasperated expression.  
“My brother thinks that wearing a hat can save the population from the flu,” he says, then he frowns, as if he believes Roy is staring at him because of what he said. Roy is staring at him because his hair is made of gold and light and maybe he really needs a couple drinks now. Not even _very-blond_ is a sufficient description. There’s every condition to put this thing to an end before it even tries to start, taking Edward Elric and his impossibly red clothes and impossibly blond hair back home and never talk about this encounter again, but Roy’s corneas must be consumed by all the time he spent in front of a screen in the office, because he doesn’t seem capable of taking his eyes off him.  
Edward has stuffed his hat into one of his pockets and now is… waiting. For something to happen.  
Roy convince his fingers to start the engine and clears his throat with discretion while his brain accuses him of being dramatically out of practice with this whole dating thing. It has been three months since his last and it was a really brief coffee, with a woman. He has to concentrate.  
“I was thinking meat, if you’d like,” he says while getting out of the parking lot without destroying either the car or the streetlight, which apparently should be relevant to some slanderers by the name of Riza Hawkeye. “I know a more than decent place… Unless you’re a vegetarian. Or a vegan. You probably know a vegan restaurant in that case… I don’t know any raw food restaurant, but I’m positive we will find at least a raw food dish on the menu, or we could-”  
“If I were vegan I would probably cook my own food. Is there such thing as people who only eat raw sh- stuff? I like mine cooked,” says Edward, before frowning deeply. “Why did you think I was vegan?”  
“It seemed rude of me assuming you were omnivorous before asking. I would like to say that Havoc did nothing but talking about you this week, but the sad truth is that I barely managed to catch that his sister works at the library with your brother Alphonse, that you’re a doctor and that you’re blond”.  
The silence is disturbing, after that. Luckily, the traffic light’s red and Roy can turn around and check if his passenger is still there or he has decided to simply throw himself off the moving vehicle.  
“Did I say something…?”  
Edward is looking at him. He _laughs_.  
“A doctor? I’m not a friggin’ doctor, if I was a doctor I would have to touch people. Why does Havoc think I’m a doctor?” He pauses for a second, thoughtfully. “My brother is studying to become a doctor, but he’s quite heterosexual as far as I know, so if you’re looking for a doctor I think you should look somewhere else”.  
“I’m not looking for… I’m not looking for anything in particular. I just thought I could spend a pleasant evening getting to know someone new. Why don’t we start from the beginning?” Roy says. “My name is Roy and I work in that ugly grey building you saw. It’s surprisingly welcoming inside and there’s really good light exposure, at least in the opinion of the real estate agent that convinced me to rent it even if I was aware that I would have been working mostly at nighttime, seeing that I run a private security agency”.  
“What do people do in a private security agency?” Edward asks. His fingers are fumbling with the AC vent; he has increased the temperature by almost ten degrees and Roy is starting to evaporate. He will not throw this guy out of a moving car, everything is perfectly fine. “For the most part we stare with glassy eyes at other people gardens from our computers, but we do actual interventions when a problem seems to occur. We make a survey and sometimes we call the police… At this moment we have hired a couple of excellent technicians too, so we are starting to install alarm systems and cameras ourselves”.  
“And has anything dangerous actually ever happened?” asks Ed.  
Roy’s confused about the tone of his voice: he doesn’t sound bored, but certainly not intrigued. It’s more like he’s making and evaluation built on parameters that are clear only inside his head. At least he has had the mercy to turn down the air conditioning. He doesn’t seem capable of keeping his hand to himself for more than a couple seconds at a time.  
“Not really,” Roys answers. “Not for us, at least. The city is big and dangerous things happen, but we don’t carry guns or other weapons. It’s the police who deal with burglars. We act as simple intermediaries”.  
Education suggests that he at least tries to ask what Edward does for a living, given that he’s not a doctor; he looks so young that perhaps a crime is already being perpetrated while they talk – that too will be nothing compared to the premeditated murder of one Jean Havoc, on account of which Roy’s going to turn himself in first thing in the morning.  
There’s a sharp and persistent sound in the background though, and Roy doesn’t even manage to slide his hand down and shut his cell phone when he realizes that the beep isn’t coming from his pocket. It comes from his coat and it’s the sound of his pager. Riza told him to shut it down: Roy should seriously start listening to Riza more.  
Anyway, he doesn’t even have the time to fumble with his coat in a way that will for sure earn him a hefty fine, that Ed’s hand is already halfway inside the coat with the skills of a patented snatcher.  
“Sorry, I thought it was safer this way,” he says, before reading the display aloud. “Armstrong. What’s an armstrong?” He’s studying the device with scientific curiosity; he seems more relaxed now than before, maybe he was simply dying of hypothermia.  
“One of our customers… But if there’s a problem, someone else will take care of it. Turn it off, if you may”.  
“I broke a toaster once, just by touching it. Winry, she’s my cousin, always says she doesn’t trust me with technology,” Ed says, but then he turns the beepers off without damage. He puts it inside the gloves compartment and he even dares to make a comment about the ugly pair of gigantic heart-shaped sunglasses that Roy keeps there.  
“Don’t laugh, they’re beautiful and I look stunning in them… Or that’s what my goddaughter said when she gave them to me”.  
He says that in front of Ed’s sneer and… He can’t be less than twenty, can he? He’s an adult, he has an adult face, sharp eyes and sharp lines; It’s just that the red sweatshirt and the red shoes and – but he must be more than twenty because Roy is already on the naughty list according to Santa, baby Jesus and Princess Leia for a whole lot of other reasons and he can’t cross that line too.  
Then Edward Elric lifts his chin and he’s wearing big pink heart-shaped sunglasses and Roy accidentally activates the windshield wipers and laughs so loudly that he doesn’t hear the ringtone until Ed’s hand swings in front of his face holding his cellphone.  
“It’s Armstrong again,” Ed says.  
Roy breathes and takes the phone just to shut it off. He puts it back into the space above the radio.  
“Maybe you should answer,” Ed says. He doesn’t sound upset in the slightest, he’s busier removing the glasses from his nose to look at the road, perhaps looking for the place where Roy has promised free meat: his stomach growls.  
“Hungry?” Roy asks.  
Ed nods.  
“I forgot to have lunch or something like that. Ehy, you’re paying. I agreed to this weird blind-date shit just because I was promised free food”.  
“It depends on how much of an appetite you have, I’m only a poor surveillance agent… I’m joking,” he assures in front of the increasingly menacing way Ed’s looking at him. “I’m going to pay and you can have whatever you like, it’s really not a problem”.  
Ed raises an eyebrow; then he shrugs and grins.  
“Good,” he says, shoulders relaxed.  
It could be worse, honestly: he’s stuck in traffic jam on a Friday night with a quite rude stranger and he’s taking him to eat what’s likely going to be his weight in steaks in a place where someone will for sure sign a complaint about his red sneakers. At least it sounds like something worth remembering.  
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”  
“I heard that kind of exclamation from my aunt once, but she’s seventy,” Ed says, as Roy tries to silence his phone for the second time – just a moment before he realizes that it’s Riza calling. If Riza calls, there must be a reason. “Please forgive me, I have to take this one”.  
Ed says “no problem” and Roy is a bit stunned because he sounds completely sincere.  
He pulls the car over the dumpsters and answers.  
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, it’s about Mrs. Armstrong,” she said, a touch of frustration in her voice. “I’m sure everything is fine, but she’s being… quite persistent. She asked for you specifically”.  
“Riza,” Roy says. He makes a point of using her first name, sometimes, in the pointless hope that someday she will stop calling him “sir”. “Send Havoc. I’m sure Mrs. Armstrong will be satisfied. I’m in the middle of-”  
“Sir,” Riza says, and now she’s the one who’s making a point. “I am compelled to remind you once again that the Armstrongs are our most important clients right now,” and mistake with them could cost incalculable damage to our freshly started business.  
She doesn’t need to say that, but Roy suspects that Riza is secretly a Vulcan who can project thoughts into lesser minds through the ether.  
He glances towards Ed, who is now looking out of the window and seems very focus on the raindrops that are starting to fall onto the glass. He’s attractive – more than attractive and quite intriguing, which are probably two linked qualities, and… Nothing more. He’s attractive and intriguing, and Roy is honestly curious, but nothing more than that and the evenings seems to have started on the wrong foot anyway. Roy seriously doubts that he could damage it further even if he actively tries.  
“I understand. I’ll be there, thanks for calling… It’s important,” he says, but this time to Edward. He nods, totally unimpressed.  
Roy hangs up and starts driving again.  
“I have to stop for a couple minutes to talk to this person. She’s an important customer and I couldn’t say no. If you’d rather go home instead, I totally understand. I hope you’re not upset, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful”.  
Edward looks at him for a fraction of second, his yellow eyes somber in the half-light. There’s some kind of tiredness in them and for a moment he looks much more adult; so much that Roy feels the guilt creeping up in his throat, as if he had just broken something important.  
“No offense taken,” Ed says, in a perfectly natural voice. “Yeah, if you don’t mind… I’d really like to go home and watch a lot of Star Trek’s reruns, actually… But I live on the other side of the city, so it’s all right if you need to talk to this Armstrong person before, I don’t mind”.  
“Voyager?” Roy asks, mostly to decide if he could really have had a conversation with this blond non-doctor.  
“Are you drunk? The classic one”.  
Roy watches Ed’s indignant expression being replaced by a broad, contagious smile and his brain is hit by the sudden, very likely epiphany, that he hadn’t understood a single thing about Edward Elric since he saw him for the first time till this exact moment.  
They stay silent for a while, the heating is breathing in the background and Roy finds himself compelled into throwing glances at his side at any given opportunity. Ed’s still relaxed, he yawns while he studies the drops onto the windshield.  
“Shit, it’s fucking huge,” he suddenly says, chin lifted up. Luckily, Roy’s car is more aware of its surroundings than its driver. It has led them straight in front of the Armstrongs’ house. Mansion. Castle. There’s no way that any of those words aren’t a severe limitation in defining that conglomeration of turrets and walls built in the middle of an otherwise plain neighborhood.  
Roy suspects that it was the neighborhood that grew up around it, more than the other way around; otherwise he should have asked uncomfortable questions about urban plans and legal norms and no one wants that.  
“You know,” he says, while he studies one of the muscular marble bust that stand on each gate’s pillar. “It’s now the fifth time that Mrs. Armstrong called me this month, because apparently the system shuts down for no reason every night at half-past height. I get here, I make my survey and everything is perfectly fine. It’s quite boring, but she always bakes awesome cookies”. He turns towards Ed, one eyebrows suspended. “I know I promised you meat, but they’re really good cookies and I think I owe you at least some kind of food”.  
“Mustang,” Ed says. “Are you trying to bribe me now? With cookies?” He sounds like a million different meanings: that smile is not alluring, but certainly not harmless. A Cheshire’s cat smile that would have been almost alarming in every single context that didn’t involve cookies.  
“I would never dare to suspect that it would even be possible to bribe you with anything,” Roy says.  
“And you’d be wrong, I’m already sold,” Ed replies. He’s out of the car long before Roy manages to unfasten his seatbelt and while he’s putting his coats on, Ed’s already standing under the intercom, looking at the camera with open hostility.  
“Everything seems in order,” he comments, studying the garden through the fence. “I mean… Isn’t it a bit suspicious?”  
Roy looks at him and shrugs.  
“I thought that too, the first time. And then the second. If I call the police for a third time I’m quite sure you’ll have to bring me those cookies in jail, because they’ll start to think I’m some kind of harassing idiot… Mrs. Armstrong? It’s Roy Mustang”.  
The voice from the intercom creaks and tremble.  
“Mr. Mustang, dear, lovely of you to come with so little notice. Why don’t you come inside, I’ve made some cookies. Please, hurry!”  
She hangs up and Roy find himself blinking stupidly in front of the camera.  
“Suspicious doesn’t even start to cover this shit, you know that, right?” says Ed. Then, since Roy’s life is evidently some kind of b-movie, the gate screeches until it’s wide open.  
“All right, it is suspicious. But the cookies really are worth it”  
“Mustang, I swear, if inside that fucking manor there’s somebody who’s holding a fucking gun I’m going to use your body as a human shield”. He sounds quite more serious than a sentence like that would usually require; Roy laughs anyway, dead leaves crunching under their feet as they enter.  
“Well, I’ll have you know that Mr. Armstrong is the proud owner of at least half a dozen antique rifles and he is somebody. A man, to be specific and a seriously manly man, if you like to consider facial hair as an indicator, which I happen to think it’s fairly narrow-minded… Anyway, he has an impressive beard which wouldn’t be that impressive if he didn’t choose to model it into half a dozen symmetrical curls. I’m not kidding,” Roy adds, because Ed is currently trying to break a couple of his own ribs just by laughing. “Unfortunately as far as I know right now he’s out of town, but you can’t miss the portrait… It’s huge, like everything else in that house, people included. You just need to stay focused and try not to be too distracted by the peacocks”.  
“Was that a figure of speech?” Ed asks, while they climb onto the patio. Roy pretends not to hear the new, louder burst of laughter that explodes as soon as Ed catches a glimpse of a poor, chilly peacock that’s walking behind the gazebo. Roy knocks onto the door, but it’s difficult not to laugh too, when Ed’s laugh is so vibrant and strong even if he’s trying to smother it inside his own elbow.  
Maybe it really is a pity about that dinner.  
Steps announce themselves behind the door, the handle creaks but the hinges don’t make a sound when the shutter opens to frame the impossible height of the landlady: Mrs. Armstrong’s shadows stretches itself on the doorway and her anti-gravitational curl bounces.  
“Good evening, Mrs. Armstrong,” says Roy. “I brought a guest with me this time, I hope you don’t mind. We’re not going to impose on you for long”.  
“Of course not,” she says, quite cryptically. She usually tries to kidnap him and keep him there until Roy’s ears are full of cookies; but perhaps she’s just baffled by the mere presence of Ed and his red everything. Right now he’s studying the statue of a slightly too muscular dog that’s standing right next to the doorframe. He’s also incredibly blond and incredibly young-looking – even more now that he got the chance to point and laugh at a peacock.  
Mrs. Armstrong hesitates and there’s something off in her smile; Roy is about to ask what happened when she completely open the door and insists that they come inside, because cookies are freshly made and there’s hot chocolate too.  
Apparently that is an efficient way to convince Edward that is okay to enter into a stranger’s home and Roy is so confused that he forgets to show him Philip Gargantos Armstrong portrait.  
Something is off: he doesn’t know what it is. He close the door and raises his chin; his nose is almost frozen, but he should be able to smell cookies nonetheless.  
“A guy with a gun,” says Ed and Roy blinks. He stares at his face: he’s frowning and his index finger is lifted up; he’s pointing at Mrs. Armstrong. “A guy, Mustang, holding a fucking gun. There”.  
“Who the hell is this kid? Why is there a fucking kid?” the guy says, gun still pointed to Mrs. Armstrong. She seems to be experiencing an intense moment of facial constipation and Roy is still very confused.  
There is a man, with a gun, and seeing that Roy’s life is still convinced they’re in a b-movie, the guy is wearing not only a ski mask, but an eyepatch too.  
At that point, Roy’s not even surprised when a second guy and his gun comes out of the kitchen.  
Meanwhile, instead of being panicking like any other sensible civilian in the same situation, Edward Elric stands straight, feet planted on the carpet, and growls.  
“I’m not a fucking kid, you gigantic moron,” he says. “I’m almost twenty-five, it’s a fucking quarter of an entire fucking century”.  
For some inexplicable reasons that maybe Roy should contemplate discussing with a psychiatric if he makes it out alive, a sensible part of his mind thinks that’s splendid news. It’s good, though, because from then his brain starts to function again.  
“I am truly sorry since it seems like you two gentlemen had other plans for the night, but we’ve already called the police, they’re on their way. I therefore politely suggest that you leave this lady alone immediately, otherwise…”  
“Otherwise? Otherwise what,” says Eyepatch guy. He doesn’t seem aware that such thing as firearm security exists and Roy instinctively jumps in front of Ed: almost a quarter of a century is too young to die, especially not like this, not because of him. Because Roy is sure that it must be his fault, in some stupid, twisted way. Then Eyepatch points the gun directly at his head.  
“You have no power here, Colonel Mustang. We make the damn rules here”.  
Okay. So, that explain something and nothing at all and it has also downgraded that b-movie to a c-movie with a single turn of phrase.  
Every eye shifts on him, even Philip Gargantos Armstrong’s from the huge portrait.  
“I tried to hit them with a tea set,” says Mrs. Armstrong, trembling. “But I couldn’t… It was a good tea set”.  
It’s unclear if she meant that she couldn’t stand to sacrifice it or if she regrets that she had to break it for nothing. Roy would like to think about that too, but the only thought that his brain is agreeing to process right now is his stupid military rank and the knowledge that this whole situation is his fault; and not in some vague, karmic way: it’s his fault, just like it isn’t Mrs. Armstrong’s fault and, more than that, it’s not Edward Elric’s fault in any possible capacity.  
Edward Elric who’s now standing with both hand raised while larger, rude ones search his clothes for the phone that apparently he has left in the car.  
“Leave him alone,” says Roys voice, somewhere outside the buzzing guilt in his ears. It’s just that – he cannot stand this: this is no longer his life, military ranks and guns, violence. He didn’t want it to be like that anymore and sure as hell didn’t want to mix that with Mrs. Armstrong’s cookies and Edward Elric’s blondness, his impossibly red clothes and his contagious laugh; all of that, it doesn’t have anything to do with colonels and goddamned guns.  
Roy doesn’t know exactly when his arm has tightened around the man’s throat, but his grip slackens as Mrs. Armstrong screams, along with the other criminal.  
“Let him go,” he says. “Another wrong move and the women is dead”.  
Roy’s lungs are being squeezed, that much he understands: the pain vibrates like a sharp sound straight through his jaw; the man’s elbow fixed itself in his ribs and Roy’s whole body bounces against the coat rack. The coats miraculously don’t fall on his face, but it means that he can clearly register the butt of the gun targeted for his temple.  
He instinctively shuts his eyes waiting for the impact, but when he remembers that Riza would have killed him for a stupid move like that – don’t fucking ever close your eyes during a fight, you moron – something awfully red has popped up between his dumb head and the weapon and Roy’s nose is less than an inch from the end of a very blond ponytail.  
“Let’s all fucking calm down,” says Edward Elric, owner of the very red arm that’s shielding Roy’s stupid face from being maimed. His voice is a dry, rough mixture of commanding and conciliating tone and it’s so bizarre that the hallway remains silent for a solid second. Or maybe it’s that Roy’s neck has met the coat rack in a rather violent way and his ears are not cooperating at the moment.  
Eyepatch guy, who’s the closest one, retire his arm back while Ed lowers his own. Roy coughs and shuts his eyes for an instant, to collect himself. He then opens them and mimics Ed’s conciliatory behavior by raising his palm and not giving in the painful urge to at least rub his sore ribs.  
“What the hell were you thinking? He could have killed you,” Ed says, furious. It’s all upside-down: Roy – today Colonel Roy Mustang for some reason – is being scolded like a little kid by an actual almost-little kid. Maybe he’s concussed, because it seems like his face is coming out from the fog.  
Eyepatch guy emits some kind of consternated growl along with a mumble that sounds suspiciously like “why he’s the one screaming, I should be the one screaming”, but Roy cannot for the life of him concentrate on these many stimuli right now.  
“They want me,” he manages to say. “It’s okay, there’s no reason for you to be here, you have nothing to do with this, so stand back and-” and there’s probably another million effective ways to deliver this concept; it must pass through, Roy must makes himself clear on that point: he will do anything necessary to keep this person and Mrs. Armstrong safe at the cost of his own life. He’s ready. He’s not ready to receive an index planted right in his breastbone, but life is really trying hard to surprise him this evening.  
“Self-sacrifice is just a shitty mean to satisfy your own stupid ego,” says Ed. He growls it, pissed to death. “If you’re thinking about pulling off some other idiotic hero-bullshit, be smart and let the adults take care of the situation, am I made myself clear?”  
Biology is pretty solid on the fact that Edward Elric cannot have actual flames in his eyes, but it’s a pity that he decided to snarl that spiel at Roy because if the two burglars slash presumably war criminals had been at the receiving hand of that Roy’s quite sure they would have wisely chosen to discreetly hide themselves in a cupboard waiting for the police to come rescue them.  
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Eyepatch guy said instead, gun still firmly in his hand and index still dangerously placed too close to the trigger.  
Edward turns just one bit, his head tilts just a degree and his hair glides smoothly onto the red hood. Bizarre doesn’t even begin to cover the extremities of anything of this.  
He shrugs his left shoulder like the other one is stiff and when he talks his voice is steady and recklessly full of sass.  
“Apparently, I’m a doctor,” he says, and it makes so little sense that no one dares to contradict him. 

*

Every single one of the conspicuous, extensive mistakes that Roy did in his life, has always managed to come back to hit him hard into the solar plexus at the most unexpected moments.  
Guerrilla’s leaders against whom he directed warfare operation something like more than half a decade ago are not among the most bizarre thus far. Somehow Roy has long realized that sooner or later all the evil he did was going to come back to choke him; nevertheless, he wasn’t as far-sighted as to imagine that it would have happened all at once inside Mrs. Armstrong’s spacious living room in the company of a freshly met twenty-five years old blond guy with an extensive knowledge in how to deal with hostage situations. Or maybe just puzzling at ease with a gun pointed at his head, and Roy’s not sure which one of the two option carries the worst implications.  
“Okay, let’s fucking try to understand what’s going on here,” Edward is saying, in a lecturing tone that would have put a university professor at shame. “You have sabotaged the surveillance system every evening since the begin of this month just to put it back in order every single time. All of this just because you then would be certain that Mrs. Armstrong would have called Mustang and no one else to take care of the problem”.  
She’s sitting stiffly in her husband’s armchair, sniffling behind an embroidered handkerchief.  
“Scoundrels,” she says, half fretful and half outraged. Perhaps she’s even more outraged than anxious, it’s quite difficult to point out underneath the layers of both fabric and self-imposed composure that’s holding her up as if she was seated on an actual throne.  
But it’s Ed the real surprise there: it must be naïve or simply mad as a horse, Roy’s not sure yet, but it seems like that whole situation has stimulated nothing more than some kind of anthropological curiosity inside his brain.  
“So what was your plan? You broke the alarm, you put the alarm back together and whatsoever, then today you decided it was a good day to break in and wait for Mustang so you could kill him using a gun. Inside of this lady house, that, no offense, looks a lot like a fucking museum?”  
Bald, the guy with the Eyepatch, doesn’t seem to detect the sarcasm.  
“That’s exactly what we did, kid,” he says. “We planned and we waited until we were sure that you’d come here alone and unharmed, thinking that nothing more suspicious than a simple malfunction was happening”. He hisses it right into Roy’s left eardrum, probably for the sake of drama. There’s a high possibility that he has a mustache, because the ski mask rustles while he speaks.  
“Okay,” Ed continues. He isn’t scared, he’s not even nervous, at least on the surface; more than anything he seems annoyed, as they were intent on playing Risk and he was the only one taking the challenge seriously. “I’m the only one who thinks that’s the most stupidly convoluted plan ever?”  
“You know what, kid? You talk way too much,” not-Bald – even if it’s difficult to say for sure, given that the ski-mask doesn’t show his head – guy says. He also points the gun a little bit closer to Ed’s forehead and Roy almost jumps in his seat.  
Ed throws him a glance that’s even more grounding than the cold metal of the gun pointed at his temple. Roy tries his best not to look into those eyes.  
“Anyway, I guess that you have somehow accomplished your goal despite the overall absurdity of your plan,” Roy says. “You wanted to take revenge on me and here I am, there’s no need for them to be involved any further than this”.  
“Mr. Mustang, no!”  
It’s almost comforting that someone is actually willing to yell that, even if it’s Mrs. Armstrong, and she’s the one in the middle of what must be a nervous breakdown, severely aggravated when she is told to shut up in a horribly rude tone – if it’s not a gun that’s going to kill her this evening, she will for sure be scarred forever by all this rudeness.  
“Oh, my, how noble of him,” Bald says and the sheer force of his spit manages to somehow overcome the shield of the ski-mask. Roy would be fairly grossed out if his brain wasn’t relatively more amazed by the fact that he had noticed it at all. He never ceased to be baffled by the way dramatic moments like that manage to broaden and maximize every little detail into a huge pile of stupid comic relief inside his stupid half-concussed head. The half-concussion probably isn’t helping, too.  
“But we know that’s just bullshit, isn’t it, Mr. Mustang?” Bald continues. “We know who you really are”.  
Roy would love to say that he’s new to this kind of tirade from the lips of some very angry, usually armed people who think he owes them something. In his experience angry, armed people are also always very eager to explain in great detail the reason why Roy’s the root of all their problem since infancy in addition to being the root of all evil. And he should be grateful for that inclination because that’s one of the main reason why he’s still alive: aggressors that are keen on beating around the bush and Riza trigger-happy fingers.  
Bald sticks the barrel of the gun right under his chin while he goes on with his spiel, though, and that’s quite unpleasant. Roy tries discretely to pull his head back and don’t cough, but without much of a success.  
“Saint colonel fucking Mustang, shiny armor and noble motives as usual…You’re nothing else than a dirty killer and a dog, Mustang. I know you don’t even remember our names, we are just some other scattered piece onto your damn chess-board. Now, now you worry about innocents and whatnot, but then… You didn’t give a rat’s ass then, did you? You didn’t worry about collateral damages, while your shit-eating army of dogs raised their guns against their own countrymen for the sake of this corrupted government! You have killed hundreds… Our father! Our father was a good man, our father had an ideal-”  
Does he remember? Roy highly doubts that the ski-masks are making any difference, there. It’s horrible and petty, another one of the innumerable reasons why he’s always been far beyond forgiveness, but he doesn’t: he doesn’t remember every single face of every single person he killed or he gave the order to kill or just simply died while he was the one in charge. He remembers some faces and they keep him awake at night, so he tries desperately to forget because otherwise, he should just give up this whole try-to-go-on-living business. Otherwise, he couldn’t muster the energy to get out of his bed on most days.  
He swallows and re-opens his eyes; the pair on the other side of the room is fixed in his, golden and so intense that it seems like they’re trying to project some telepathic message onto him; but even if Ed has an actual hair-antenna that’s stubbornly defying gravity on the top of his forehead, Roy is positive that it doesn’t mean he’s actually in possession of psychic power. Yet.  
Roy’s looks away; Ed’s face is so tremendously young, so extraordinarily alive that the guilt is bound to chew on his insides and then spit them out.  
“They didn’t see your faces, they have no idea who the two of you are,” he says. “I will follow you wherever you think is a suitable place for an execution or whatever it is that you had in mind, but leave them alone”.  
The metal is so cold that it’s a sign of how tense he is that he doesn’t really react when the barrel of the gun is abruptly pushed against the nape of his neck. He just shuts his eyes for a moment, but there’s no shot nor any other sound except for a brief sob coming from the proximity of Mrs. Armstrong and her handkerchief.  
“Close that fucking mouth, Mustang, or I swear I’ll stick a gun inside it”.  
“Come on, guys, did you really planned all this shit just to spend the evening threatening to kill us?”  
Roy refocuses on the room as a whole, but Ed is still at gunpoint, even though he’s insisting in gesticulate with both hands like that’s just a minor inconvenience and not a situation in which he could die.  
“Don’t freak out, I’m just trying to understand the logic behind all this…” he waves both hands in the air. “The more you talk, the more it seems to me like we’ve landed in the middle of some Peppa Pig episode”.  
“Edward,” Roy begins, but only to prompt Bald in giving him a new hairstyle with the barrel of the gun.  
Edward snorts.  
“Okay, look,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve got the burning desire to teach people how to be a proper guerrilla or whatever, but this is too much. You have redefined the boundaries of idiocy here”.  
“Kid,” not-Bald begins, more baffled than offended. “Do you have a death-wish or what?”  
“It’s just that there were like a million more effective ways to whack him,” Ed says, and Roy is enough baffled too that he doesn’t really register the fact that he is the object of that sentence, not considering that it’s way more likely that he’ll gamble everyone by dying of a heart attack, guns and incongruous date be damned. “You could have run him over, for fuck’s sake. You could have shot him from a scooter, you…” He’s freely enumerating legit mafia’s murdering methods like an expert and Roy would like to scream at him to stop, just stay still and don’t try to… He’s trying something. Not-Bald is distracted by the rant and his left elbow is quite closer to Ed’s shoulder than it was before; it’s not telepathy, but when Roy’s eyes meet Ed’s, somehow a message seeps through.  
“Hell, even putting a freaking sniper in front of his window would have been a better idea than this one!”  
“What the-”  
It happens in a heartbeat: one moment Not-Bald is clutching the gun between gloved fingers, the next one the hand is empty, attached to an arm that is being thrown over Ed by a swift movement of his entire body. It’s for sure nothing more than a reflection cast by the chandelier and a projection of Roy’s penchant for drama, but it again looks like there’s fire in Ed’s eyes while he jerks the arm and uses his own shoulder as a leverage point; Not-Bald’s elbow emits a sharp sound of broken things, but he hasn’t even the time to actually scream before the sole of a very red shoe is planted right over his nose, and the face that’s attached to it.  
Roy’s ears are ringing furiously; the gun went off and there’s blood, too, but it’s coming from Not-Bald’s nostrils as the man curls up onto the carpet in a fetal position, howling like an animal while Edward Elric stands tall with both feet planted onto the delicate green marble of Mrs. Armstrong’s coffee table, a halo of divine fury lit up behind his head – but that must be the chandelier, Roy can’t really think straight right now. He’s brain must be making things up, too, because now Ed’s reloading the gun with a dexterity that Riza would have considered at least remarkable and he’s holding it to the man’s head. And he seems perfectly aware of safety regulation, too, since his index finger is situated in the correct position.  
Roy doesn’t really understand if it’s him or Bald who frozen up, but a gun is still pressed into a painful spot under his chin and that’s still a problem even if the hostage situation is now a bit more confused than before.  
Still – right now it’s Ed the one who’s radiating fury and somehow a weird aura of being in control, there.  
“Now drop that gun or your brother is dead,” he says. He’s emanating a sentence: he’s judge, jury and executioner and even if it sounds like one, that’s not a line from a movie, it’s a warfare order. The pressure of the gun becomes lighter and Roy finds out that he’s going to have one of the biggest migraines he has ever experimented in the spat of the next three second; if he makes it out alive, of course. He tries to suppress a shiver and it must be highly contagious, because it slips from him to Bald’s arm and his voice.  
“Who the hell… How did you know he’s my brother?”  
Edward’s eyebrows arch and then fall in the middle of his forehead. He rolls his eyes and he’s once again twenty-something and looking unapologetically incongruous in that position.  
“You have to be the most pathologically incompetent criminals in this entire galaxy. You told us,” he explains between his teeth. Maybe frustration makes him grow taller, because he looks more dangerous than both this big, muscular men with ski-masks and Roy’s pretty sure that the fact that he’s now holding a gun is not really the point, there. “You said it, you patented dickhead! Our father here, our father there… If you didn’t want for us to know, you should have tried to keep your mouth shut. Fuck everything, this is bullshit”. He snorts. “So, would you please drop the gun or do I need to fill out a fucking written request?”  
Bald is still breathing somewhere above Roy’s head; Mrs. Armstrong is the human embodiment of stillness right now, eyes stubbornly affixed onto the bullet-hole that has planted himself into the portrait of her eldest daughter, whom Roy knows well enough to start considering the benefits of an instant, painless death over the prospective of having to explain himself to her sometimes in the near future.  
There’s a movement in the edge of his vision; Bald is lowering the gun and something like relief almost creeps behinds Roy’s neck, before Ed’s voice growls again, threatening enough that Not-Bald gives up any belligerent intent and remains neatly folded onto the floor.  
“Obviously you have to unload it first, for fuck’s sake!”  
The man obeys, his fingers inept for a second before the clip falls on the ground with a dry thud.  
Ed eye rolls.  
“Now kick the gun towards me. Do I have to explain everything? Did Peppa Pig also fucking teach you how to deal with firearms?”  
The weapon slides onto the floor, bounces against one of the coffee table paw-shaped leg and remains there, harmless.  
“Good,” Ed says. “Ehy, lady, could you please go call the police or whatever, now? When you’ve done, I think it’s better if you go waiting outside, too, just to be safe”.  
These are things that Roy should say. It’s all his fault and he hasn’t done anything at all to make things right, he should at least be the one to… Mrs. Armstrong stands up, still jittery but as composed as always. She glances towards Bald and then collects the rim of her long skirt in her hands.  
“When my husband finds out what you have done here, gentlemen, he will be sure you’ll never hear the end of it,” she said as she exits the room, chin up-lifted. She then paused to look at Ed for a moment. “Please, dear, try not to leave any other bullets around if you could”.  
“Sorry ma’am, but that’s on them,” Ed replies, gun pointing in the generic direction of Not-Bald, who’s now grumbling end bleeding between his fingers.  
Roy has a huge migraine; he presses the palms of his hands on his eyelids for a second. Chances are high that if he opens them now, he will find himself lying on the concrete of an alley, seated next to a dumpster with a lot of cheap rum splashed onto his shirt – that would be a more than sensible explanation for this whole hallucination.  
When he opens the eyes for real, it’s just in time to hear a loud “ehy!” cries from Ed before his military training do finally show up and lights his brain like an entire Christmas tree, like a current through some kind of exoskeleton that grows around his body. He lets Bald’s punch graze his cheek and his frustrated growl reaches his eardrum, while he strikes his elbow right under his jaw. He then turns on himself, uses the armchair as a lifting point and slips the other arm towards the guy’s face; he cups his hand and smashes it onto Bald’s ear, which Roy feels is also a good contrapasso for the migraine.  
The guy’s single pupil bounces upward while he falls down right onto Roy’s raised knee, which he plants in his stomach for good measure. Only then he remembers how he usually breathes while living.  
“So you’re not useless,” Ed says, more satisfied than surprised. Roy doesn’t really know what to say or how to say it, right now, so he starts to drag a very heavy, very unconscious Bald near his brother. Ed stares and doesn’t raise a finger to help him and Roy thinks it’s pretty much fair, considering Ed has done all the metaphorical heavy lifting since then.  
“I’m afraid I’m out of practice,” he says, instead of out of shape, which is also true at least accordingly to his lower back.  
Ed’s studying him from top to bottom again, just like he did in the parking lot what now appears to be roughly half a century ago.  
“I was thinking starting to think they got the wrong guy, honestly,” he says, and grins a little too – Roy is going to die for a whole different reason than a bullet through his head that night if he isn’t cautious. “Mistaken identity is not that uncommon, you know. Even if Mustang is sure one hell of a weird surname”.  
Roy would laugh, wholeheartedly, if he had some scrap of strength left. He settles for a shake of his head and wonders if he should really see a doctor, since apparently nobody here is one – it could be a headache, it could be a stroke: surely there’s no other likable explanation for that intense, growing desire of hugging Edward Elric – the incongruous, amazing person who saved his life instead of having a totally legit panic attack while two masked strangers threatened to kill him.  
Rather than making a complete fool of himself, though, he goes straight to the monumental curtains hanging in front of the not less than monumental window and loosens the cords; then he bends over to decide how to tie the two guy’s wrists as efficiently as possible.  
Maybe he really shares some kind of psychic bond with Edward Elric now – or, more likely, Roy’s concussed brain is not working properly while Ed’s is perfectly lucid and also more than quite brilliant, so that he’s able to grasp simple input as that one. They both kneel down the carpet to discuss sailor’s knots while Bald remains peacefully unconscious and Not-Bald is still bleeding profusely from his broken nose and gazing into space. His ski-mask is soaked in blood and when Ed removes it from the guy’s face he emits a sincere “bleah”. Roy tries to look at the faces, Bald’s is quite peculiar with his mustache and the eyepatch and the long hair, but his mind is blank: he has no idea who these people are.  
He breathes and tries to stand up.  
“So… You’re not a doctor,” he says. His voice sure sound silly and hoarse and Edward is giving him a blank look, like Roy had suddenly sprout a second head. Roy clears his throat. “I mean… I’d like to know what you do for a living since you’re not a doctor”.  
Ed’s face remains still for a second, then he blinks. Two times and there’s something guarded in his posture, something cautious. Maybe he’s a martial artist – he’s a martial artist for sure, given what Roy has seen tonight: someone must have taught him how to fight, there’s no other explanation. Maybe he’s famous – Bruce Lee or at least Jackie Chan famous – and Roy will be mocked by everyone forever because he failed to recognize him. Perhaps he’s a self-defense teacher or the owner of a gun shop, maybe both. Maybe he too is a guerrilla just like Bald and Not-Bald and all that happened tonight was, in fact, some kind of bigger plot orchestrated by someone who’s watching them from the shadows while rubbing his hands and caressing cats and... Edward shrugs his left shoulder.  
“I am a doctor, I guess… Of philosophy” he says, then he rubs his cheek with one finger, almost like he’s embarrassed by the admission. “An almost-doctor of philosophy, actually. Not quite there yet… Applied chemistry, anyway”.  
Applied chemistry, of course. An almost-doctor in Applied Chemistry. Roy’s going to kill Havoc and then ask if Ed knows some fashionable way to dispose of the body using some goddamned applied chemistry.  
“Uh, ehy… Is everything alright?” Ed asks. He’s still holding the gun and there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes; it sets down in the line of his shoulder, a tension that wasn’t there while he was fighting criminals bare-handed. This person is capable of disarming burglars with krav maga or whatever those moves were but he’s completely at a loss while having something resembling a normal conversation. That migraine is definitely hindering the trajectory of his thought, but Roy is quite sure that he should be apologizing profusely right now. It’s raining, though, and rain always turns his brain cells into a pile of useless goo.  
“The thing you said before, about self-sacrifice…”  
He should give up on being surprised by this person, it would be much more efficient for the sake of the ongoing conversation. Still, Ed snorts and then laugh – an almost laugh, just before he lets himself fall seat onto the coffee table, gun loosely between his knee and an unexpected look of tiredness in the line of his back.  
“Not my quote… My brother is a wise-ass,” he says. “But he’s also pretty much always right… He’s right on this one, you know? You can’t give up on living like that. You think you’re doing the right thing or some egoistic shit like that, but you’re just going to hurt the people who love you or whatever…So, next time commit to fucking survive instead, that’s way more efficient”.  
It sounds a lot like a curse, it burns somewhere between his sore ribs and it’s probably one of the most valuable advice he had ever got. Riza would agree, he owes her an apology.  
“Is there anything I can do,” he then says, because he feels like he has to make amends to the universe and he hasn’t the faintest idea where to start: try to wipe off that drained expression from Ed’s face seems fair, at least. It would be way fairer if he could erase the last forty-something minutes from his memory – maybe the entire evening. Last week as a whole, starting from the moment when Havoc’s sister had thought that shoving anyone in Roy’s direction wouldn’t turn into a complete disaster.  
Ed lifts an eyebrow and even those are blond in a way that the entire concept of blondness cannot fully encapsulate.  
“If you could magically materialize some food into my stomach it would be awesome. I’m fucking starving,” he says. Roy’s skull is evidently full of mud, but somehow his brain still retains the ability to register all of the extraordinary details that make Edward Elric, incredible and quite puzzling as he is, a real person – he exhales from his nostrils and in that bit of a moment he looks like is going to fall apart right there on Mrs. Armstrong expensive carpet, but neatly and without much drama; like a Jedi, he would leave nothing more than a heap of his too-red clothes and maybe a variation into the balance of the Force.  
It lasts no longer than a fraction of second, but apparently it’s reason enough for Roy’s brain to project a complex fantasy in which he’s going bear-hug him, wrap him up in a blanket-kebab and then park him onto the backseat of his car to ship him somewhere comfortable and safe.  
His migraine has generated a mind of its own and he’s obviously delirious, so he stops right in front of the coffee table and seats next to Edward – as next as courtesy distance allowed, at least. A not-creepy-at-all distance, he hopes.  
Ed throws him a quick glance, then he scratches at the nape of his neck, just right above his hair-tie.  
In the background, Mrs- Armstrong is talking on the phone but is mostly white noise and the rain is way louder.  
“I’m afraid cookies are definitively out of question, tonight,” Roy says. What is he doing? He should be calling Riza, he should be apologizing to Edward, clear the air and reassure him that he’s not going to see his face ever again. Instead he’s unable to avoid looking into his eyes and they’re just too clear even if tired and… That gun must be a bluff, there’s no other possible explanation. Those are not the eyes of a killer; that little, half-exhausted laugh can’t be the laugh of a killer.  
“Dang, I was really looking forward to those cookies,” Ed says.  
“I might have a Snickers laying somewhere around, wait,” Roy says. He fishes into his pocket and there it is, Breda’s half-smashed snack. Riza confiscated it on Monday and then made the deadly mistake of leaving it inside of a drawer for anyone to take – stupid office stories, stupid little things that make Roy’s life somehow whole and decent and worthy living despite the death of someone’s father, of somebody else’s brother, and sister and relatives and friends and all the blood that is still dripping from his hands.  
“It’s not home-baked cookies,” Ed says, glancing sideway at the package.  
“You don’t want it?”  
“Didn’t say that,” Ed says, and his hand is fast: he snatches the Snickers out of Roy’s grasp and starts unwrapping it with quick fingers.  
Roy should be asking him a lot of questions: where did he learn hand-to-hand combat, why does he know how to hold a gun – it’s not something you learn at school, isn’t it? – does he think it would be conceivable to accept Roy’s most humble apologies by honoring him with his presence during a real date with a real dinner where any part of Roy’s ridiculously dark past is severely banned?  
But Ed’s cheeks are full of peanuts and caramel, right now, and he must have dislodged his jaw when he announces that the police is coming even if the sirens are loud enough that the whole neighborhood is surely already aware.  
And, anyway: you can’t really ask questions about guns to someone whose cheeks are full of Snickers, can you?

*

When Roy tells people that Riza is a saint, he actually means one of those mystics, armored figures, cloaked in light, that use to kill dragons with very big swords instead of some kind of passive victim who accepted to become a martyr. Riza Hawkeye is his patron saint and Roy worships her as much as he fears her.  
She’s now waiting for agent Brosch to finish printing Roy’s statement so that Roy can sign it in triplicate using the half-chewed pen that was on the desk.  
There’s a bench next to the door and Riza’s sitting on it with her coat folded onto her knees, looking any bit harmless as the bench itself. She has arrived less than an hour ago, mere minutes after the police and Roy didn’t quite grasp why or how, but is seems like some agent had to physically prevent her to handcuffing the attackers. Sure thing is, Black Hayate has at the very least managed to bite Bald.  
Roy’s sure everything would start making more sense when that killer migraine will leave him alone; and when he’ll eat something, maybe a Snickers. He doesn’t regret giving it to Edward, though, not for a second.  
“You’ll receive a phone call sometime tomorrow, sir,” detective Ross says. Roy’s sure she’s a very polite, very competent person, even if she has spent the last hour asking an indescribably huge amount of very dumb question, which unfortunately it’s what they call procedure around here.  
Roy uses the chair as a leverage and gets up; Riza does the same and so does Black Hayate, every bit as composed as his mistress. She has always looked like she knows where her gravitational center is and therefore where everything is, even things Roy didn’t know he had lost until she takes charge: in fact she hands him his coat.  
“I’ve parked right below the building”.  
And of course she did. She followed the police car and convinced an entire department that her dog was going to follow her and she was going to follow Roy, procedures be damned. Even though being ex-military probably has granted them some privilege on that front.  
Roy nods and it’s a major stupid idea because his head is seriously trying to kill him. And Riza blondness, too. It’s not trying to kill him, but it stops him in his track; Riza’s hair is gorgeous, a sandy, light shade of blond that probably had a huge impact in her being his second teenage crush – right after Will Smith – but it’s not the kind of blondness his brain was searching for right now.  
“Riza, listen, I have to-”  
She raises a hand and sighs.  
“I understand… I’ll be waiting in the car. Please don’t make me wait more than necessary”.  
Telepathy is an extremely useful tool sometimes. He leaves Riza in front of the elevator and it’s a pity he’s not the psychic there, because he would have been really simpler to read the mind of some passing policemen and know where to find Edward Elric instantly.  
He has seen Mrs. Armstrong being escorted outside by her son – Alex has hugged him so tight that Roy was sure he’ll have to find himself a chiropractor – but he hasn’t seen or heard about Ed yet.  
The wisest move is probably just going back and ask Detective Ross, but then he sees it: a long, very blond figure standing right next to the dustbin and talking over the phone. He’s a kid, hair in a short and neat cut, but that kind of blond is exactly the blond Roy was searching for and his brain is making him do stupid thing such as sprint forward and way before common sense kicks in and invites him to calm down.  
“No, Win, they haven’t arrested him… I’m not lying, I’m not Ed! Yes,” this clone of Edward Elric is saying; he’s taller than Ed and also dressed in less flashy colors. Nevertheless, Roy finds himself blinking in front of his Pusheen sweatshirt – Elicia is a big fan – and the kid’s voice gains a shadow of perplexity.  
He looks at Roy, smile politely and then move onto the other side of the dustbin, cell phone still attached to the ear.  
“No Win, no guns involved, I swear. Don’t worry, you know how the police is, always asking a lot of questions. Tell Granny to keep calm, it’s just… Yes, Granny, I know you are calm, I can tell it from your very calm voice, then tell Winry to keep calm, okay? Everything is fine and no one has been hurt. Yes. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Yes, me too… No, I don’t think I’ll tell him that, Win, I don’t want to spoil your shouting match tomorrow. Sleep well!” He hangs up and then releases a long, loud sigh. His eyes are golden too, no mistakes on that. Oh, and they’re also looking straight at Roy now.  
“Can I help you?” he asks.  
“I’m Roy Mustang,” Roy says, and it must be the right decision because the very blond eyebrows of this very blond person raise up.  
“Oh,” who must be Edward Elric brother says, before pausing. “Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Roy Mustang… I’m Alphonse, Ed’s brother. Nice to meet you”.  
They shake hands like a couple old gentlemen – a couple in which he is the old one and Alphonse is the gentleman, obviously.  
“Actually, I’m afraid to say that there were guns involved and also that it was all my fault, so…”  
“Yes, I know about the guns and the, uhm, revenge situation?” Alphonse says. He sounds friendly and cheerful, almost too much given the situation, but nonetheless his whole demeanor help Roy’s nerve calm down – it's like he’s absolving him, without the need to ask. “I just thought it was better to hold back some details. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to you, at this point, but my brother has a knack of attracting catastrophic events wherever he goes. At the very least this time no one got hit on the head with a hammer”. He then studies a little deeper into Roy’s eyes, like he’s actually regretting saying that – Roy’s seriously hope his pupils are still of the same size.  
Alphonse’s eyes have a rounder, kinder shape than Edward’s, but they ’re also dramatically missing all that flickering and pyrotechnical effects that tricked Roy’s stupid mind into thinking he had actually seen flames inside of human orbs.  
Roy smiles, exhausted.  
“Unfortunately, all my acquaintances would say the exact same thing about me”.  
“It’s not unlikely for extraordinary people to meet under extraordinary circumstances,” Alphonse says and Roy doesn’t know what he means, which is also fairly new given that he usually makes a point of being the one in control of conversations. Perhaps Alphonse does the exact same thing and Roy is at a disadvantage here, with his mild concussion and the mild charismatic Elric vibe, which he’s also pretty sure it has to be an actual thing.  
Ha can’t ponder deeper into that matter, though, because the closest door burst open and the knob slams into the wall. The poor notice board that was hanging there tilts and then falls with a dry thud.  
“You can do whatever the fuck you want, I’ve broken out from jail once and I can do it again!”  
Ed’s blond ponytail whirls and almost whips his cheek when he turns to look at Alphonse, who is still busy facepalming.  
“He’s joking, agents, he ’s not a criminal!” he chirps, while glaring at his brother so hard that’s surprising Ed doesn’t combust.  
Instead, he relaxes his shoulders and his eyebrows at once.  
“I wasn’t joking at all, it was a Drachman jail. Shitty day, that one,” he says, crossing his arms. Roy believes him without any kind of effort whatsoever. If Edward Elric told him he’s been on Mars just yesterday, the only reaction that Roy would find suitable would be questioning him about the planet’s atmosphere.  
“Shittier than this one?” Roy asks; Alphonse is still trying to negotiate on behalf of his brother with a couple policemen, but Roy’s brain isn’t able to register a single word. He feels even more tired and crumpled than two hours ago, like he’s been inside of a blender.  
Ed’s scratching his cheek with a finger and there’s nothing even remotely sexual in the motion, so it’s clear that Roy’s brain is definitely dead when it takes the lead in labeling the entirety of Edward human form as “incredibly attractive”, starting from the very blond hair-antenna too the very red shoes.  
“Well, at least today I saw a peacock. I don’t think I would have never seen a peacock otherwise, so there’s that,” Ed says. He half shrugs and smiles and Roy decides to put his hands deep into his pockets so that his migraine prevent him from going totally crazy and simply go hug Edward Elric, which would be a supremely bad idea and would also probably earn him a broken nose or something equally painful and completely well deserved.  
“You also saved everyone life. You saved mine,” Roy says.  
Ed's chin suddenly straightens up and – he looks at him completely puzzled, like Roy had spoken a foreign language.  
The policemen choose that moment to exit their office, grumbling about the fact that’s almost midnight and it would be really nice if witnesses, victims, potential terrorists and their relatives would remove themselves so they could finally go home since that’s a police station and not a Seven Eleven, thankyouverymuch. That also means that somehow Alphonse Elric has convinced them to leave his brother alone with nothing more than his charisma and maybe psychic power – they must be genetic, then.  
“Brother,” he says, both hands on Ed’s shoulders. “I think it would be nice if you and Mr. Mustang could move your flirting downstairs while I go retrieve your stuff… I’m going to assume that the reason your hat isn’t on your head right now is because the kidnappers have explicitly forbidden you to wear it”. He smiles sweetly and Ed’s eyelids flutter.  
“You can’t order me to wear the stupid hat, Al! You’re not my boss, I’m fourteen months older than you, for fuck’s sake!” He shouts, but Alphonse is already smiling at Roy, while he steps in the direction of the hallway, apparently aware of where he should go despite the fact that – Roy registers it in that exact moment – he’s wearing a pair of fluffy, Cheshire cat-shaped slippers; the kind of footwear very worried family members wear when they have to go pick up a family member from the police station.  
“Jeez, you see what kind of bullshit I have to put up with?” Ed says, but he’s actually looking at his brother's back like he’s the most precious thing in the whole universe.  
“I think you both have excellent genes,” Roy’s migraine says, before he has the time to clear his throat and try again. “I mean… Your brother seems like a very fine person to me. Not unlike yourself”.  
“What,” Ed says, eyes squinted. Then he shakes his head. “Yeah, sure, whatever… I mean, Al is the best person on this whole fucking excuse of a planet as far as I know. Is that a vending machine?”  
If it is, Roy’s right between Edward and the machine in question.  
“Don’t you think that eating other snacks would be quite unhealthy after that Snickers?” Roy says, when Ed has already sprint in front of the machine and he’s now studying the packages inside with a skeptical expression.  
“Shut up, Mustang, I’m starving. Next time you’d better take me to dinner before someone tries to murder us, okay?”  
“Next time,” Roy ears himself say and it’s already too late, because Ed has suddenly turned and he’s watching him with something closely resembling panic in his eyes. He looks way more on the verge of panic now than when he was being held at gunpoint.  
“I… I didn’t mean anything!” He says, choked. “I was just talking, like people do, and I’m starving and I need glucose and shit to function properly and…” He’s gesticulating so hard that it’s like there’s a localized minor tornado happening in the airspace between him and Roy.  
“Next time I’ll do that,” Roy manages to answer. He’s almost sure he’s smiling, because something yellow and glowing and warm has grown inside of his stomach and it has found his way up till his mouth. “Or maybe we should just skip the murder part and do something more relaxing afterwards”.  
“Eh,” Ed says, although it’s not a word and his face is twitching like Roy has suggested that they go to the Comicon dressed up as Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy – Elicia would love the idea.  
“Only if you want,” Roy says, because Ed’s pupils have started to bounce in every possible direction but Roy’s owns and that can’t be a good sign. “I mean, I’d understand perfectly if you’d rather go out with someone who didn’t get you almost killed. It would be not only legitimate, but also highly advisable, considering-“  
“You want to?” Ed asks, looking completely dumbstruck.  
How does he believe he doesn’t want to? But he’s asking seriously, that much Roy can tell. He’s not only dead serious, but also scared to death.  
Roy didn’t understand a single thing about Edward Elric, did he? He wants to, he wants to understand so bad right now that the sheer intensity of that feeling almost throws him off balance.  
“Yes. Of course I want to. I’d be honored to go on another date with you. A proper one. How does next Friday sounds to you?”  
Sometimes during that conversation, Ed has managed to withdraw until his back was pressed against the vending machine, like a frightened animal. He nods, though, even if he’s obviously still trying to process what Roy has said.  
“Okay. Okay, that’s… cool. You owe me a proper dinner and, I mean, it’s statistically unlikely to risk murder two weeks in a row, unless… Well, how many more deadly enemies do you think you have?”  
The elevator doors choose that exact moment to open on Riza’s unimpressed face. She’s surely pissed off because Roy is the worst friend ever and has made her wait in the car for what must be more than fifteen minutes.  
Ed looks at her, suddenly wary.  
“Luckily enough, she’s on my side,” Roy assures. “But I guess it would be wonderful to have another pair of eyes to watch my back, since I’m that dramatically prone to accidents”.  
Then soft sounds announce that Al’s returning; his ominous purple slippers are rustling onto the pavement while he walks towards their direction.  
Whatever it was, Ed’s reply dies onto his tongue. Roy didn’t know when they actually ended up that close to each other – he can see Ed’s irises in details from there, and every single eyelash and the thin, faded scar that cuts his forehead just right above his left eyebrow and… But then both of Ed’s eyebrows furrow, as if he had just realized something, and his eyes shift to focus on his brother’s feet.  
If he kisses the same way he laughs, Roy’s sure it’s worth the waiting.


End file.
